Based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades represented one of the few successful screenwriting efforts of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in Germany in the years just following World War I, the film stars Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone… MoreBased on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades represented one of the few successful screenwriting efforts of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in Germany in the years just following World War I, the film stars Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young as three battle-weary, thoroughly disillusioned returning soldiers. The three friends pool their savings and open an auto-repair shop, and it is this that brings them in contact with wealthy motorist Lionel Atwill--and with Atwill's lovely travelling companion Margaret Sullavan. Taylor begins a romance with Sullavan, who soon joins the three comrades, making the group a jovial, fun-seeking foursome (this plot element bears traces of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, as well as the 1931 film The Last Flight). Though Sullavan suffers from tuberculosis (her shady past is only alluded to), she is encouraged by her male companions to fully enjoy what is left of her life. This becomes increasingly difficult when one of the comrades, Young, is killed during a political riot (it's a Nazi riot, though not so-labelled by ever-careful MGM). In the end, the four comrades are only two in number, with nothing but memories to see them through the cataclysmic years to come. Despite its Hollywoodized bowdlerization of the Remarque original, Three Comrades remains a poignant, haunting experience.

Sullavan won the New York Film Critic's prize for her role here, and it was deserved: if Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner stands as her best movie, then this is certainly her best performance.

I watched this a while ago, I barely remember it, but it was okay, not good enough that I remember it though.

John Ballantine

An uneven effort to show soldiers recovering from war in Germany. More interesting than the actual film is the timing of the film just before the start of the… MoreAn uneven effort to show soldiers recovering from war in Germany. More interesting than the actual film is the timing of the film just before the start of the Second World War. There are hidden critiques of the Nazis but the motivation behind releasing it when it was released are baffling.

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